I’ve been asked, based on my “About me” blurb on the side here, to elaborate on the circumstances surrounding the introduction of myself to my wife.

I consider it a pretty good story. Here goes...

Back in the day (about 19 years ago), my friend Chris and I were hot sh*ts (or at least thought we were). We had the wavy mullets going, the Miami-vice look down (teal tank tops…white dockers..), and I had a kick-ass car (1970 red-on-black Cutlass). We spent our weekends cruising the beach trying to score chicks.

Chris was still going to college at the time, where Thursday parties were the norm. The men’s dorm building was three stories high. The door to the building on the first floor had an entranceway built over it to protect you from the rain (I guess) while you were fumbling for your dorm key. The top of this entranceway was flat, and was conveniently located just below the second floor window of the dorm.

As such, in a fit of highly intellectual (read: big buzz on) thinking, Chris came up with a plan:

He decided it would be fun to jump out of the third floor window.

After leaping from the third floor, he would land onto the roof of the entranceway, and then go in through the window to the second floor.

He decided this was a better idea than actually walking the 12 steps down to the second floor. Actually, I think Jim Beam made this decision for him.

Suffice it to say that the leap didn’t go as planned.

As Chris landed on the top of the entranceway, both his ankles snapped and he shot off the little rooftop sideways into the bushes below…where, if I remember correctly, he cracked a rib.

Devil:1, Chris: 0.

So, with two shin-high casts on both his legs, he was pretty despondent. He had to go everywhere with crutches, and he could barely put his feet down. To get him out of his funk, I suggested a trip to the beach.

Apparently, walking up and down the strip isn’t all that much fun if you can’t use your legs. I had no problem…and was zooming up and down…but Chris was getting tired from hobbling all over the place. So we decided to sit on a wall on the side of the strip and check out the cars going by…

Then came the convertible.

A big white convertible was stopped in traffic in front of us. In the convertible, were 4 girls. Hot girls. No guys. Subsequently, the hoots started happening between all of us, and the girls motioned over and yelled “C’mon! Get in!”

I looked over at Chris, still pretty bummed out. He didn’t want to go.

So I did what any good friend would do in this situation...

I left him.

Yep, I got up, jumped into the convertible with the four girls, and we all drove away…laughing and giggling as we rattled off down the strip.

…leaving Chris by himself…sitting on a stone wall…with two casts on his feet.

I know what you’re thinking…but it was FOUR GIRLS!

…the rest of my story reads like a Forum Letter. Not to Penthouse, but to Popular Mechanics:

Dear Popular Mechanics,

I never thought this would happen to me. I hopped into a car with four hot girls one steamy night. I was excited. I could tell they were, too. Then it happened…about a mile down the road, they began asking those questions that every guy wants to hear…

"This car is making a funny noise…what do you think it is?"

"Should we get this checked out? We’re leaving in a few minutes anyway, and were wondering if we should just have this towed."

What the...???

Really? You're asking me CAR QUESTIONS?!

It really, really, sucked ass.

So, about a mile into my utterly non-erotic journey, I hopped out and started hoofing it back to my crippled friend.

Meanwhile, Chris was sitting on that wall…no friends around…all hobbled up. At about the same time that I was jumping out of the car to run back, two girls happened to be walking across the street from Chris. One of them looked over at him, sitting there like a stranded handicapped dog at the pound and said…“That POOR guy! He looks so sad…and all alone. Let’s go talk to him and cheer him up.”

…and over they went...simply to try to cheer up the poor, disabled, lonely guy.

It’s about this time that your hero straddles up…all out of breath from my escape…where I see two girls talking to my friend.

I then deliver the classic pick-up line that makes girls swoon every time they hear it:

“So…which one of you wants my number?”

Surprisingly, one of them did.

And that’s how I met my wife. Booze, a bad decision, and the abandoning of a friend, and the wedding bells were a-ringing.